Pong is a sports video game released in 1972 by Atari, Inc. for use in arcades. It was originally created by Allan Alcorn as a training exercise assigned to him by Nolan Bushnell, the co-founder of Atari.
The quality of Alcorn's work led Bushnell and co-founder Ted Dabney to decide to manufacture the game commercially. The concept for Pong was based on an electronic ping-pong game featured on the Magnavox Odyssey, which was the first home video game console. This similarity resulted in a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Magnavox against Atari.